The two Guildford teams meet today. The first team's average rating of 2533 against the second team's 2367 suggests that the first team should win comfortably but strange things can happen in team chess. Looking at the relegation pool, the two-point gap between retention of top division status and relegation seems intimidating at first sight but when one looks at the squads, a couple of teams may fancy their chances of catching South Wales Dragons, in particular e2e4.org.uk, who play the Dragons today with a team averaging 2287 against one averaging 2195. Hackney also have reasonable chances of survival with a very decent squad, though they meet a reinvigorated Wood Green today.

Interesting to note the opening in the Zhou- Jones match. If I remember correctly Yang- Fan annotated a game of his for the latest edition of BCM featuring him playing this opening, but with 4. Ng5. This time he's chosen to go down a quieter road, presumably not willing to take the chance on Gawain having prepared an improvement.

How exactly would knowing the pairings on the Saturday evening as opposed to the Sunday morning have changed your life? Or did you have nothing else to do on the Saturday evening but sit in front of a PC waiting for a chance to complain when the pairings failed to appear in line with your self-imposed deadlines? Did you really wait up until 11:54 to complain?

That is a great column, Leonard. I must confess I was completely fooled by the puzzle you set there.

I loved this bit (I hope you don't mind me quoting it):

"Oxford have a reputation this year as giant-killers and they justified that by avoiding a statistically plausible 0-8 whitewash. Their untitled board four beat Guildford’s Spanish IM while Oxford’s woman player, Francesca Matta, covered herself and Bicester CC with glory by setting up an impassable endgame blockade and drawing against a male GM – whom the Guardian will not name but who can be identified by judicious internet research – rated some 550 points higher."